Once more the England team has come to the selfless aid of world cricket. After days of predictably boring mismatches, the English turned up in Nagpur determined to light a fire cracker under this tournament's soporific torpor.
In a display of clearly altruistic ineptitude, they produced a spectacle of diabolical out cricket that nearly gifted the match to the unfancied Dutch. Perhaps Ravi Bopara and walking wicket Paul Collingwood could have taken it to the last ball, but I predicted a win in the penultimate over and shall now collect my leather jacket from the virtual bookmaker of my imaginings.
Why it was thought a good idea to start day 2 of the World Cup with such heady delights as New Zealand v. Kenya is anyone's guess; followed up shortly thereafter (as it turned out) by Sri Lanka v. Canada.
I'd have made the top sides play each other from the outset while the minnows did likewise thus putting the favourites under more pressure later in the group stages when the slightest slip against a Canada or Ireland would mean elimination there and then. But what do I know? I just watch the game for fun. Maybe some Canadian construction magnate was on a tight schedule and millions of tons of Ambuja Cement doesn't just buy itself, you know.
At last, however, we have reached that point in the group stages when the organizers felt we were ready for a clash of the big boys, so following yesterday's first sightings of South Africa and West Indies, we get a potentially tasty clash of the Antipodean giants (though perhaps that's somewhat over egging the Australians).
Both teams had good wins in their first matches with New Zealand's crushing of Kenya being the performance of the tournament so far. Australia got bogged down by Zimbabwe's spinners, but there's no disgrace in that. Ray Price has been weaving his nagging web of prosaic magic for around 60 years now, and in Cremer and Utseya they possess genuine variety, as well as the worst rat tail hair extension (Cremer) in world cricket bar possibly Ishant Sharma's.
Australia v. New Zealand often produces close matches. For the best part of thirty years, the Aussies refused even to play the Kiwis, thinking them too inferior. But the Black Caps have proved to be no pushovers and are especially effective on slow low wickets that are the norm now on their home grounds.
Don't be fooled by that 4-0 reverse in Bangladesh last year. This New Zealand is a very different side with all the big names back as today's guest commentator on Test Match Sofa, Iain O'Brien, the former Kiwi medium-pacer, will no doubt remind me ad nauseam.
In Taylor, McCullum, Ryder, Oram and Vettori they have five potential match winners. Their seam bowling doesn't look up to much but I would expect Vettori to have three spinners on hand to suffocate the Aussies. By contrast, Australia continue to pursue a predictable strategy of brute force through Lee, Tait and Johnson with Watson filling in.
In a display of clearly altruistic ineptitude, they produced a spectacle of diabolical out cricket that nearly gifted the match to the unfancied Dutch. Perhaps Ravi Bopara and walking wicket Paul Collingwood could have taken it to the last ball, but I predicted a win in the penultimate over and shall now collect my leather jacket from the virtual bookmaker of my imaginings.
Why it was thought a good idea to start day 2 of the World Cup with such heady delights as New Zealand v. Kenya is anyone's guess; followed up shortly thereafter (as it turned out) by Sri Lanka v. Canada.
I'd have made the top sides play each other from the outset while the minnows did likewise thus putting the favourites under more pressure later in the group stages when the slightest slip against a Canada or Ireland would mean elimination there and then. But what do I know? I just watch the game for fun. Maybe some Canadian construction magnate was on a tight schedule and millions of tons of Ambuja Cement doesn't just buy itself, you know.
At last, however, we have reached that point in the group stages when the organizers felt we were ready for a clash of the big boys, so following yesterday's first sightings of South Africa and West Indies, we get a potentially tasty clash of the Antipodean giants (though perhaps that's somewhat over egging the Australians).
Both teams had good wins in their first matches with New Zealand's crushing of Kenya being the performance of the tournament so far. Australia got bogged down by Zimbabwe's spinners, but there's no disgrace in that. Ray Price has been weaving his nagging web of prosaic magic for around 60 years now, and in Cremer and Utseya they possess genuine variety, as well as the worst rat tail hair extension (Cremer) in world cricket bar possibly Ishant Sharma's.
Australia v. New Zealand often produces close matches. For the best part of thirty years, the Aussies refused even to play the Kiwis, thinking them too inferior. But the Black Caps have proved to be no pushovers and are especially effective on slow low wickets that are the norm now on their home grounds.
Don't be fooled by that 4-0 reverse in Bangladesh last year. This New Zealand is a very different side with all the big names back as today's guest commentator on Test Match Sofa, Iain O'Brien, the former Kiwi medium-pacer, will no doubt remind me ad nauseam.
In Taylor, McCullum, Ryder, Oram and Vettori they have five potential match winners. Their seam bowling doesn't look up to much but I would expect Vettori to have three spinners on hand to suffocate the Aussies. By contrast, Australia continue to pursue a predictable strategy of brute force through Lee, Tait and Johnson with Watson filling in.
